Great Purge was an organized effort by dictator Joseph Stalin to remove people from positions of power in the Soviet Union from 1936 to 1938. It included the arrest, imprisonment, or execution of millions of members of the government, the armed forces, and the Communist Party. Stalin claimed that the Purge, sometimes called the Great Terror, was necessary to rid the regime of spies and others who wanted to bring down the Soviet Union. However, historians believe most of the victims were innocent.
In 1934, Stalin reorganized the Soviet Union’s secret police forces and increased the authority of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs. In Russian, the organization’s name was Narodnyi komissariat vnutrennikh del (NKVD). From 1936 to 1938, Stalin ordered the NKVD to arrest and interrogate people who were suspected of opposing him. During interrogations, authorities forced people to confess to crimes they may or may not have committed. People also were pressured to inform on their friends, family, neighbors, and others. Usually, the arrest of one person was followed by the arrest of that person’s associates. People became afraid to speak openly to anyone except their closest friends and family.
The Purge included three major show trials (public trials held for purposes of propaganda) in 1936, 1937, and 1938. At the trials, leading figures made public confessions for crimes they did not commit. Authorities used the confessions to arrest many more people.
The worst of the Great Purge ended in 1938 with the removal of Nikolai Yezhov as head of the NKVD. However, the regime used violence and fear throughout Stalin’s reign (1929-1953). The Great Purge was the period when the violence became especially bloody and focused on officials up to the highest levels of the system. Before the Purge, millions of people were killed or sent to prison camps. After the Purge, arrests spread through the NKVD itself. They slowed down after the Soviet Union entered into World War II in 1941, but returned after the war ended in 1945. The Purge brought in new leaders at every level of government. The process caused instability and threatened the regime’s ability to govern.
See also NKVD ; Stalin, Joseph ; Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) .
